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THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

DISTINGUISHED MEXICANS WHO TOOK I'ART IN THE REVOLUTION OF 
TEXAS, WITH (;LANCES AT ITS EARLY EVENTS 



r!'M^ POTTER, U. S. A. 

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Reprinted from the Magazirie of American History for October, 1878 



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^AjVJ. J-J DUi3-rD^J 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

DISTINGUISHED MEXICANS WHO TOOK PART IN THE REVOLUTION OF 
TEXAS, WITH GLANCES AT ITS EARLY EVENTS 

IT may not be generally known that a few Mexicans of talent and 
standing-, by identifying themselves with the cause of Texas in her 
early struggles, have acquired a place in the history of one of our 
States ; and their names and characters may not be without interest to 
a portion of the public. Though they represented but a fraction of the 
population, which was politically insignificant, being mostly unenlight- 
ened they may well be remembered more on account of personal traits 
and 'adventures than because of any potent influence which they 
exerted on the destinies of Texas. Among the strange re-appearances 
which occur in history, we find one in the fact that the first Vice Presi- 
dent and one of the founders of the Republic of Texas, had been one 
of the founders also of the Mexican Republic. He assisted in framing 
the constitutions of both, and at an earlier day had figured in the Span- 
ish Cortes of Madrid. It would not have seemed more singular (allow- 
ing it chronological possibility) if one of the authors of the act of 
settlement, which gave the crown of Great Britain to the House of 
Hanover, had turned up in our Continental Congress. 

Zavala, Navarro and Ruiz, who were members of the Convention 
of 1836, which declared the independence and framed the Constitution 
of Texas, are to be counted among the founders of that Republic, and 
consequently among the founders of the State of Texas. They were 
all Mexicans of respectable Spanish descent ; and there was another 
leader of the same nativitv and descent named Padilla, who, though his 
name is not found in the 'roll of the Convention, figured prominently 
during 1835 in the movements which originated that convocation. All 
our were men of superior or respectable talent, anu the first two merit 



2 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

a place in history ; Zavala, from his whole political career, which began 
long before the Revolution of Texas, and Navarro for his patriotic suf- 
ferings and constancy after that event. The careers of the other two 
were less distinguished, and I shall have occasion to mention them only 
incidentally. Ruiz, a native of San Antonio, had been a respectable 
office holder under the Mexican Government, and Padilla had held 
prominent positions in the Government of the State. He was born I 
think at Saltillo, then the capital of Coahuila and Texas. 

Don Lorenzo de Zavala was born at Merida, in Yucatan, in 1789. 
His mind was early turned to political speculations. In 1809, when he 
left college, there being no press in Yucatan, he formed an association 
of liberals, with the view of disseminating his principles by reading his 
manuscript essays to the members. Two years after he established the 
first political newspaper which ever appeared in the province. In 18 14 
he was elected a deputy from Yucatan to the Spanish Cortes ; but when 
he was about to embark for Europe, a decree of Ferdinand VII. 
arrived, annulling the Spanish Constitution of 1812, and proscribing its 
known and zealous supporters. Zavala, being unmistakably one of 
these, was arrested, fettered and imprisoned in the Castle of San Juan 
de Ulloa, at Vera Cruz, where he remained over three years. During 
this time he succeeded in obtaining books, and lightened the hours of 
confinement by studying medicine, in which he made himself proficient. 
On being liberated in 18 18, he returned to Yucatan, and found himself 
destitute under the process of official pillage which had followed pro- 
scription, and now his prison studies brought him the means of sub- 
sistence. He maintained himself for some time by the successful 
practice of medicine. 

The Spanish Constitution being at length for a short time reestab- 
lished, he was again in 1820 elected a deputy to the Cortes, and took his 
seat in that body in September of that year. He was the most zealous 
advocate of the rights of Spanish America, and proposed to the Cortes 
a plan for a separate parliamentary administration for Mexico. Soon 
after the news of the revolution of Iguala, in that country, arrived at 
Madrid. It was the rising effected by Iturbide at the head of a portion 
of the native Royalist forces of Mexico, which he had brought over to 
sustain him; and the first plan which he offered to his country and to 
Spain was a separate constitutional monarchy, under the same sover- 
eign. This coincided with the views which Zavala had already 
offered, and appeared to comprehend as much independence as was 
attainable. He accordingly urged on the Cortes the acceptance of the 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 3 

offer, but it was rejected with scorn. This soon led to the entire sepa- 
ration of Mexico from the mother country, which proved to be far 
more easy of accomplishment than was then apprehended in Spain ; for 
the native Royalist troops in Mexico turned over in mass to Iturbide, 
and they outnumbered the European regiments too greatly to leave 
any hope of successful resistance to the latter. Iturbide's offer to 
Ferdinand, which was afterwards modified into a similar offer to Don 
Carlos, was a sham, by which he beguiled his Spanish supporters in 
Mexico till strong enough to throw off the mask, when he took to him- 
self what he had proffered to the Bourbons, and was proclaimed by his 
army Emperor of Mexico. 

Before this result had come, however, the position of Zavala had 
become such that his continuance in Madrid was neither desirable nor 
prudent. He left there, and went by way of Paris to London, whence 
he addressed the Spanish American deputies who remained in Madrid 
an able and lucid political note, which has been looked upon as a stand- 
ard declaration of the rights of the Mexican people. He returned to 
Yucatan in 1822. The independence of Mexico was now dcfacto estab- 
lished, and he was elected to the first Mexican Congress called by Itur- 
bide, and was deputed from that body to a National Junta, chosen to 
deliberate on national affairs during recess. In that body he organized 
an opposition to the imperial usurpation of Iturbide, which eventually 
aided in effecting its fall. 

Iturbide, who had shown great daring and ability in the attainm. . 
of power, evinced no capacity for keeping it, and fell as rapidly as he 
had risen. i\fter he was deposed and banished, Zavala was in 1823 
elected to the convention which formed the Federal Constitution of 
Mexico, known as that of 1824, and he was president of that assembly 
when the above instrument was signed. We then find him successively 
a Senator in the first Constitutional Congress and Governor of the 
State of Mexico. In 1828, while he was still in the latter office, the 
animosity of parties rose to a height which it was plain could end only 
m bloodshed. The Liberals were apprehensive of Spanish influence 
and monarchical tendencies, while their opponents were no less fearful 
of the disorders and proscriptions incident to popular sway, of which 
latter the recent arbitrary banishment of the Spanish residents had given 
a foretaste. Well-meaning men partook of the ultra views of the popu- 
lar party, believing that violence alone could crush the influence they 
dreaded, while a large number of designing aspirants on both sides 
sought to drive matters to extremity, in the hope of working out their 



4 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

own advancement. In such a state of affairs a man so prominent and 
zealous as Zavala could not fail to be drawn into the vortex. He was 
not only strongly attached to the Federal system, but rather a Red Re- 
publican in his views, deeming inferiority of race and intelligence not 
wholly incompatible with safe democracy. A presidential election, 
which it was alleged the conservatives had brought about for their can- 
didate by bribery and corruption, and which perhaps they really had, 
received the forms of legalization, but was annulled by their opponents 
with force of arms. It would probably have been difficult to ferret out 
all the corruption on both sides, and ascertain which was heaviest; but 
it would have been well for Mexico had the legalized side of fraud been 
allowed to pass. The success of the Liberals inaugurated that course 
of periodical revolution which has ever since become chronic in that 
wretched country. The City of Mexico, on being taken by the insur- 
gents, was plundered by the soldier}' and the mob, and although order 
was soon restored, the example of this first outbreak under the Repub- 
lic has had the most fatal effects. Zavala took a leading part in this 
revolt, and his enemies have even charged him with encouraging the 
worst disorders which ensued ; but as such calamities never fail to 
beget calumny, the charge ought to be received with caution. In 
going into the movement I believe he was actuated by sincere views of 
what the necessities of the country' demanded, and it is to be hoped 
that the heat of revolutionary conflict and the contagion of disorder 
did not hurry him into steps which in cooler moments he would have 
shrunk from. 

These events occurred early in 1S29, during a part of which Zavala 
filled the office of Minister of Finance under the administration of 
Guerrero. Towards the close of the year he was appointed Minister 
to Rome ; but a new revolution prevented him from proceeding on 
that mission. President Guerrero was deposed by Bustamente, and 
subsequently executed. Zavala was for a time imprisoned ; but being 
subsequently released, made, in 1830, a visit to the United States and 
Europe. While abroad he wrote an historical work, entitled Ah Essay 
on the Revolutions of Mexico. The style of it is lively and entertaining; 
but it seems to have been penned too hastily to admit of the accuracy 
which history demands. 

In 1833, new revolutions having brought again into power the party 
to which he belonged, he returned to Mexico, and was for a short time 
Minister of Foreign Relations, while Pcdraza was President. During 
the same year he was simultaneously elected a representative from 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 5 

Yucatan, and Governor of the State of Mexico, which latter office he 
accepted for the second time. He filled it during the season of cholera, 
when his scientific as well as his administrative ability were of great 
service to the public. In Toluca, the capital of the State, there is a 
street called by his name to commemorate his exertions in the cause 
of humanity during that time of pestilence. 

In 1834, during Santa Ana's first Presidency, he was appointed 
Minister Plenipotentiary to France. While on that mission, the last 
office he filled under the Mexican Government, he published a 
book of travels in the United States. I have never seen the work, but 
I am told that his reflections on our institutions, and his speculations on 
the future destinies of Mexico, show great sagacity and depth ; and that 
among the latter are surmises of the eventual annexation of Mexico to 
the United States. 

Zavala had not been many months in Paris when the news arrived 
there that Santa Ana had consummated the usurpation he had long 
contemplated by subverting the Constitution of 1824, and making 
himself the head of a Central Government, with dictatorial powers. 
Zavala immediately sent home his resignation, accompanied by a protest, 
in which he denounced Santa Ana in the most indignant terms. He 
was ordered by Santa Ana to return home ; but he had in effect 
renounced his allegiance to the then Government when he gave vip his 
mission, the same as he had done his allegiance to Spain when he left 
his seat in the Cortes. He soon left Europe, and after another visit to 
the United States, repaired to Texas, the only part of Mexico which bid 
fair to hold out against Santa Ana's usurpation. The hope of aiding in 
resisting it was the only motive which drew him thither ; for though he 
owned some lands in that province, their extent and value was too 
inconsiderable to create any interested object in the course he took. 

Texas was often, for want of a better term, called a province while 
under the Mexican Federation, and I use that word as meaning a 
topographical section. There never was a Mexican State of Texas, 
though this is often implied by the misuse of terms ; and the revolt of 
Texas against Mexico has no analogy with the secession of one of our 
States on the plea of sovereignty. In former times I often met with 
silly editorials in which that analogy was assumed, with much unmean- 
ing twaddle about the original compact of the Mexican States. There 
never was such a compact ; for the Mexican States were made by the 
nation, not the nation by the States, as in our case. When those 
States were formed, two adjoining sections, which had been under the 



6 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

Spanish Government, the provinces of Coahuila and Texas, were united in 
one State, and the old names were combined in its designation to indicate 
a design of erecting Texas into a separate State whenever the increase of 
population should justify it. The seat of Government of the double- 
named State was remote from Texas, being at Saltillo, which had been 
of old the chief city of the Spanish province of Coahuila. 

Though Texas, when Zavala arrived there, had not yielded to the 
Central Government, she was not yet in arms. The part}' decidedly re- 
solved on resistance was but small, and its leaders met with much opposi- 
tion in their efforts to rouse the country. In no part of Mexico was the 
change in the form of Government so undesirable as in Texas, where a dif- 
ference of race and language from the rest of the country more forcibly 
called for home rule and local laws ; yet as revolt would have to encounter 
terrible odds, the change would perhaps have been eventually submitted 
to if Mexico had refrained from seeking to enforce it by arms. General 
Stephen F. Austin had been arrested in the city of Mexico on some 
vague charge or suspicion, and had been held there in confinement for 
several months ; but as there still seemed to both sides some prospect of 
averting hostilities, he was now released, that he might aid in concilia- 
tion ; but as his return was soon followed by the arrival of troops, he 
had to take the opposite course. 

The arrival of Zavala in Texas, where he was received with much 
cordiality, tended greatly to prevent an adjustment, not so much from 
any direct influence he could exert upon the inhabitants of Texas, as 
from the adverse influence which the Government attributed to him, and 
supposed he would there exert. The Government of Mexico alwa3'S 
overrated what was Mexican ; this identilication of Texas with Zavala 
put an end to their conciliatory steps, and they demanded that this 
enemy of Santa Ana should be given up. This of course was refused. 

In the meantime the leaders of the war party had, after much 
exertion, suceeded in procuring the call of what was termed a Consulta- 
tion. That name, in preference to Convention, was suggested by some of 
the more moderate of those who came into the measure, as being likely 
to seem less defiant towards the Government, and was adopted by 
the rest. The body was to consist of delegates from the several 
municipalities, and their business was to consult and deliberate on 
public affairs ; but before it could meet the province was roused by the 
arrival of a Mexican brigade under General Cos; he occupied San 
Antonio, with the intent of moving upon the Anglo-American colonies of 
Texas ; and it was well known that a part of his programme was a general 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 7 

disarmment of the population. In most cases it would be absurd for the 
inhabitants of a still peaceful district to view as invasion the entrance of 
troops of the Government they are not quite unwilling to acknowledge; 
but the situation and experience of the people of Texas justified them in 
such a view at this juncture. They had joined themselves to a nation 
which, after a trial of some years, seemed to appreciate political rights 
too little to deem them worth defending, a nation whose authorities 
could not be trusted, and whose Government was liable to change with 
the wind. They had to choose between using their arms and giving them 
up ; and it was a fair case of resistance for self preservation. Whatever 
motives the leaders may have entertained, this was the feeling which 
actuated the masses of Texas when they took up arms against Mexico. 
The originators of the consultation did not create revolt. Had no such 
body be'en called, the approach of Mexican troops would have caused 
an armed uprising. Had no troops entered Texas the consultation, I 
believe, would have peacefully adjourned after making an earnest remon- 
strance against the measures they deprecated, and offering a plan for 
the administration of their province. 

As it was, armed forces assembled by the spontaneous action of the 
people, and after they were organized by election, they moved on San 
Antonio, where Cos was besieged by an army of raw levies, as Howe 
had been in Boston, and with a like result. General Austin, who had 
come as a pacificator, and clung to the hope of peace even after the 
uprising begun, soon felt compelled to take part in it, and as he was the 
only on'e who could unite the factions in camp, was elected to the com- 
mand of the forces. Though he commenced the siege of San Antonio, 
he was, before it ended, called away from his command for a mis- 
sion to the United States. Many of the members elect of the Consulta- 
tion were brought together by mustering in arms with their neighbors, 
and when a sufficient number had thus met, they adjourned to San Fel- 
ipe, and being there joined by others from their homes, the Consultation 
was organized, and proceeded to act as a Convention. Most of the 
members, as well as a large majority of the inhabitants, did not yet con- 
template the final separation from Mexico, which necessity ere long 
forced upon them ; for notwithstanding the disastrous failure^ which the 
great State of Zacatecas had made in resisting usurpation, it was still 
hoped that the example of Texas would reawaken revolt in other parts 
of Mexico. The stand taken by the Consultation and its supporters 
was for the Constitution of 1824, and their war cry was " Federacion." 
In accordance with this, the flag they adopted was merely a modifica- 



8 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

tion of the old one. The Mexican banner is a tri-color of perpendicular 
stripes, red, white and green, with the national eagle in the middle 
white stripe. That of the insurgents bore the number 1824 in the place 
of the eagle. 

The Consultation proceeded to form a Provisional Government, con- 
sisting of a Governor and Council, and invited other sections of Mex- 
ico to join their uprising. Having taken these and other needful steps, 
and provided for the election and assembling of a new Convention dur- 
ing the following spring, the Consultation adjourned. The Provisional 
Governor chosen was Henry Smith, one of the early settlers of Austin's 
colony, and a patriot of more zeal than tact. Zavala and Padilla were 
members of the Consultation, and the latter was chosen a member of 
the Council, whose sessions were to be permanent. 

An eventful and critical recess occurred between the sittings of the 
Consultation and Convention, the latter of which met at Washington 
on the Brazos on the ist of March, 1836. The siege of San Antonio 
had been successful; General Cos, having capitulated, was permitted to 
withdraw his forces from Texas under a parole, which in a few months 
was basely broken. No central troops then remained in the province ; 
yet no response to the voice of revolt came from the interior of Mexico. 
On the contrary, all other parts of the central Republic either con- 
tinued inertly submissive, or were zealous in seconding the usurper's 
plans to crush the alien rebels, and for this extensive preparations were 
in movement. The Provisional Government of Texas, moreover, was 
virtually dead from dissension. The hard-headed Governor and fac- 
tious Council had deposed each other, and the public accepted their 
opposite decrees so far as to ignore the authority of both The care- 
less presumption, which early success often creates, was followed by 
panic, and anarchy looked invasion inertly in the face. Santa Ana, 
with a part of his forces, was already in San Antonio, and had invested 
the Alamo, while Urrea's brigade was advancing on Fannin's post at 
Goliad. The hostile army now within or entering Texas amounted to 
about 7,500 men, and the Texan forces at the Alamo and Goliad, all that 
were yet in arms, did not exceed 700 in number. All hope of coopera- 
tion in the interior had ceased, while the position which Texas occu- 
pied as a revolted province in a great measure shut out the hope of 
help from abroad. 

Such was the state of affairs when the Convention of Te.xas met. 
The time had come when the only course left was a formal and final 
separation from Mexico, and no deliberation was needed for reaching 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 9 

that conclusion. On the ist of March the Convention organized. On 
the 2d they declared the independence of the Republic of Texas. The 
declaration, drawn up under circumstances which often cause words to 
drown ideas, was a weak document, and would have been stronger had 
it said less. The substance of it might properly have been that the 
declarants had blundered into bad company, and would have to fight 
their way out of it or perish. 

That Convention was a motley assemblage, comprising men of the 
highest order of talent, with others, rude, ignorant, and narrow-minded, 
but none, I think, deficient in hard sense and shrewdness. Among them 
were Houston and Rusk, who afterw^ards figured so conspicuously, not 
only in Texas, but in the United States Senate, and were often men- 
tioned in connection with the Presidency. Two of the members of 
Spanish descent may be ranked among the superior class. There were 
two delegates from each municipality, a Spanish term which corresponds 
closely to the English word county. Zavala was from Harrisburgh, 
and had an Anglo-American Constituency. San Antonio de Bexar was 
represented by Don Francisco Ruiz and Don Jose Antonio Navarro. I 
consider the latter as morally and intellectually superior to the rest of 
the Spanish-American group, and equal to any man in the assemblage, 
though fortune never pushed him into the prominence which some of 
them reached. The Texans of Mexican blood had been naturally the 
last to be reconciled to the idea of Independence ; but necessity now 
preached too strongly to be withstood. Zavala, a man of revolutions, 
now went readily into the movement. So, I think, did Padilla, an old 
Saltillo politician, who readily appreciated political needs. Though 
not a member he was present. Ruiz was a man of large mind, given to 
political speculation, and having long viewed the Mexican Republic as 
a failure, fostered a hope that he might live to see his own section 
annexed to the United States. Independence, as a step that way, was 
welcome to him ; but Navarro, probably the most deeply conscientious 
of the group, felt a painful shrinking from a step which he knew to be 
needful. Though his will was brought over, the pang of severing national 
allegiance unnerved him for the act, till Ruiz took him by the arm and 
led him to the desk where the instrument awaited his signature. He 
signed it, and felt that the first plunge which puts an end to all shrinking 
was over. From that moment he never swerved from the obligation he 
then incurred. Ruiz was by several years the senior of Navarro, and 
did not, I think, live to the end of that year. Padilla died two or three 
years later, but did not again take part in political affairs. The three 



lO THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

last named of the Dons had to speak through an interpreter, but Zavala 
was able to express himself with some fluency in English, and in the 
debates showed much of the sagacity of a statesman, though his ideas 
were cast in the mould of the Latin instead of the Saxon race. Though 
well appreciated, his words of course could not there carry the weight 
they had done of yore, when he rolled out his Castilian periods to those 
who shared his nativity of language ; and it must at times have occurred 
to him with half sad, and half comic effect, how oddly history can 
repeat herself, when he compared his labors of 1824 and 1836, and 
contrasted the convention which assembled in the palace of an old 
stately city, and the more pompous assemblage at Madrid, with the knot 
of frontier leadej^s who gathered at a shabby frame building in a hamlet 
of log cabins. Zavala, who was not wholly free from the pedantry of a 
doctrinaire, was addicted to citing ancient examples more often than was 
entertainingf to men of losf-cabin education, or than suited to those more 
intent on business than edification. On one occasion, rather late in the 
session, when he commenced his speech with, "A Roman once said," 
Rusk was moved to interrupt him, and exclaimed, " We had better think 
about the live Mexicans instead of the dead Romans, and finish up our 
work in time for one good sleep before we have to run." 

One of the most gifted men and pestilent disturbers of that 
Convention was a namesake, whose cognomen every old North Caro- 
linian will remember, a name which for a time introduced a new word 
into our language, a man of singular adventures and unique deeds of 
violence, one in whom unusual powers of brain and tongue were 
perverted by evil impulses, which brought him to a tragic end. in his 
prime. His disorganizing propensities proved a serious bar to business, 
till Rusk checked him, in the onl}' way which with him was effective. 
Immediately after the declaration of Independence, the Convention had 
entered upon the hurried formation of a Constitution for the new 
Republic, and concluded their work on the 17th. That instrument 
provided for a provisional President and Vice President, for the first 
year to be chosen by the Convention — their successors to be elected by 
the people ; and so soon as the Constitution was finished, David G. 
Burnet, a native of New Jersey, and an old resident of Texas, was 
chosen President, and Lorenzo de Zavala, Vice President. Although 
the latter was almost a stranger to the Convention and its constitu- 
ents, his standing as the most zealous and distinguished advocate of 
Rej:)ublicaii principles in Mexico, and the sacrifice he had made of high 
position in that country, to share the doubtful fortunes of Texas, 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION II 

demanded this tribute of respect and gratitude. The Convention 
wished also to show to the world that the cause they sustained was not 
a war of races, but a contest based on principle. The executive branch 
of the Government being installed, the Convention adjourned to Harris- 
burgh. That adjournment was a flight and dispersion, perhaps without 
the one good sleep which Rusk had coveted. Some of the delegates 
hastened to Houston's camp, and others to their homes to place their 
families in safety, for the whole population, save what was in the army, 
was in flight ; and the army itself in retreat. 

On the sixth day of the session General Houston had left the Con- 
vention to take command of the few volunteers who were mustering at 
Gonsales. On that day the Alamo fell with its last defender, and on 
the next a body of invaders, far outnumbering Houston's meagre band, 
moved on Gonsales, whence he retired in haste, after a rather needless 
burning of the village, an example which the enemy thereafter took up. 
Three days after the close of the session Fannin and his command 
surrendered, and were soon after massacred. Though Houston's force 
had considerably increased, he felt compelled to retreat successively 
across the Colorado and the Brazos, leaving behind a panic which emptied 
every house, and sent the inmates flying towards the Sabine and Gal- 
veston Island. The President, Vice President and Cabinet reassembled 
at Harrisburg, near which Burnet and Zavala had their homes ; but the 
enemy's approach soon drove them to the aforesaid coast island, where 
a crowd of fugitives of all ages and sexes had taken refuge, and were 
bivouacked, for the island had till then been almost uninhabited. Fam- 
ine and the sea were before that multitude, and the sword behind it ; 
and in a few days the anxiety which reigned among them was intensified 
by the booming of cannon, which faintly reached them from the main- 
land. It seemed like the forerunner of doom ; but soon a messenger 
boat came, and mystery and dread at once vanished. 

" O stunning joy, when hope had fled 
Our cause had risen from the dead." 

The battle of San Jacinto had been fought, and invasion crushed at one 
blow — by what seemed the last blow of despair ; and the captive usurper 
was a suppliant for his life. Exultation, whose intensity cannot be 
realized, now succeeded to flight and dismay. 

The President and other members of the new Government immedi- 
ately repaired to Houston's camp, near the field of San Jacinto ; and 
there Zavala had an interview with his former friend and more recent 
enemy, Santa Ana. The latter, who knew that the sword of justice 



12 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

hung over him by a hair, was keenly alive to every chance which offered 
of moving any influence in his favor, and sought, in the insinuating way 
he knew so well how to exercise, to appeal to the gencrositv of the 
exile. Zavala sternly replied : " Vou have not only subverted the liber- 
ties of my country and butchered my new friends, but have sought to 
destroy me, and have pursued me almost to my own door in the land of 
my exile. I am not the man whom you can expect to plead for you." 
I have always viewed the sparing of Santa Ana, from unmanly motives 
of policy, as a bartering of justice, which brought no compensating 
return ; and though Zavala was not a bloodthirsty man, 1 believe Texas 
would have escaped that reproach, had the fate of the felon chief 
depended on him. 

But though Zavala, I think, never favored the design of making 
Santa Ana available as a medium for negotiation, I am told that he was 
willing to make his captured officers and men available, if it could be 
done, as a military resource for securing the independence of Texas and 
retrieving his own fortunes in Mexico. 1 have heard that about this time 
he entertained a vague plan of this nature ; but nothing came of it. It 
was impracticable in itself, and received no countenance from the Gov- 
ernment of Texas. Many of Zavala's friends in his new adopted country 
were also much displeased to find that he could still entertain any 
political aspirations looking to the land of his birth ; but I am confident 
that those dreams, of which he spake openly and freely, did not contem- 
plate aught which would involve a betrayal of the cause he had 
espoused ; but that he looked forward to a time of peace and intimate 
relations, but not of political reunion between Mexico and Texas. He 
must have known that the day for that was forever past. 

The time, however, was near when all visions of an earthly future 
for Lorenzo de Zavala were to cease. The autumn of 1836 proved to be 
a very sickly season in Texas, and the severe mental trials he had lately 
undergone may have impaired his vital forces. He did not outlive his 
term of Vice-Presidency, but sickened and died at his home near Harris- 
burgh, on the 25th of November, 1836. His death was followed in 
about six weeks by that of General Austin. Zavala had been twice 
married, and left a widow, an American lady, who may be still living in 
Texas. A son by his first marriage, already grown up, came with the 
father to his adopted country, and distinguished himself in the battle of 
San Jacinto. 

Zavala, though a man of talent, energy and resource, and in many 
hings of deep discernment, was too much of a doctrinaire antl visionary 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 1 3 

to have made a first class, practical statesman. Like many other ultra 
Democrats of a reddish tendency, he combined with that trait some 
vague idea of a head which, in certain straits and contingencies, might 
exercise dictatorial powers ; and he never fully appreciated the Anglo- 
American conception of wholly distinct and independent functions in the 
legislative, executive and judicial departments, without a head over all; 
yet the sincerity of his zeal as a friend of human liberty and progress 
cannot be doubted, and in any good cause his aid in conjunction with 
men of more sober intellect would always have been valuable. The fact 
that he had for over three years trod the dungeon stones of San Juan 
de Ulloa as a suffering friend of liberty, would entitle him to our ven- 
eration, had there been nothing else in his history to claim it. 

The story of the birth of that short-lived nation — the Republic of 
Texas — which I have endeavored briefly to relate, considering the 
shortness of time and the limited numbers involved, contains a big vol- 
ume of the romance of history ; of that kind of romance which com- 
bines farce with tragedy. In going through it we are continually 
stepping from the sublime to the ridiculous. The defiance of a nation 
of 8,000,000 by a province containing 20,000 souls seemed a piece of 
farcical presumption, and the Provisional Governor Henry Smith made 
it seem more so by a silly threat in his inaugural to carry his conquests 
to the walls of Mexico ; and this bravado was uttered when Texas was 
anxious to conciliate the liberal element of Mexico. The revolt would 
have been an atrocious farce had it failed ; but eventual success con- 
verted the defiance into a sublime act of daring. 

The successful siege of San Antonio, where a well-appointed Mex- 
ican army capitulated to a horde of rustics and bear hunters, com- 
manded by men who had never set a squadron in the field, is sublime 
enough to contrast farcically with the supineness which a few months 
after made no efficient preparation or timely muster against invasion, 
and with the panic and flight which left the country untenanted. The 
Convention of Washington met, we may say, within the enemy's reach, 
for a forced march of dragoons could have surprised them ; and there 
they declared the independence of a country, whose inhabitants were 
flying from their homes, apparently forever, and framed a constitution 
for a Republic, which to all appearance would in a month be inhabited 
only by the invaders ; and as soon as the constitution was signed the 
framers dropped their pens, and fled from an approaching enemy. In 
all this the sublime and ridiculous are so mixed up that we cannot sep- 
arate them. When the Convention met, about seven hundred soldiers 



14 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

Stood between them and over seven thousand invaders. In six days near 
a third of those defenders were slain, each man fighting till his last 
breath ; and a few days after the flight of the lawgivers the remainder of 
the seven hundred were butchered in cold blood by the perfidy of their 
captors. There was no farce in this, nor in the eleventh-hour victory, 
which plucked up the drowning honor of Texas by the locks. The 
sparing of Santa Ana, the butcher of Goliad, would have been sublime 
had not its motive made it contemptible. It was done to obtain from 
him an order of retreat to his forces still in the field — an order from a 
captive chief, whom they were no longer bound to obey, and for a 
movement thev would have made in more haste, and under no protec- 
tion of truce, had no such order been issued. They were so demoral- 
ized that half their number could have routed them, and now, with the 
return of fugitive Texans, a number almost equal to that of the re- 
maining invaders could in a few days have been mustered. The assassin 
ought not to have been left, to die in his bed and in his dotage after 
thirty more years of mischief. Had he been shot, and Filisoli, his second 
in command, been attacked by the exulting victors, not many of the 
soldiers of the latter, nor any of his cannon or baggage, would have 
recrossed the Rio Grande. 

The campaign of 1836 in Texas exhibited in the space of little more 
than forty days an epitome of the vicissitudes to which a nation may 
be subjected in a long and desolating, but finally triumphant war of 
defense. There was defeat, surrender and wholesale massacre ; storm- 
ing of ramparts and putting to the sword of defenders ; a track of fire 
and rapine ; forsaken homes, leaving league after league of country 
unpeopled ; a squalid and destitute horde of fugitives, before whom 
famine and pestilence yawned — and all this condensed into a space of 
time that seems prescribed by the rule of dramatic unity. Then the scene 
changes, as if by the working of high dramatic art, and in comes a victory 
as sudden and rapid, but not as bloodless, as if wrought by the mimic 
combat of the stage — a wide slaughter, almost without loss to the vic- 
tors, with all the triumph that stage effect could ask to grace the last act 
of the play. It ends with a grand tableau, in which the head of a nation 
bows as a captive to the rebel chief, whose execution he had a few days 
before been expecting soon to decree. What a mercy that the shifting 
scenes passed so rapidly, with a loss of life so light compared with the 
weight of vicissitude, and ended before famine and pestilence had time 
to enter upon the stage; yet this immunity makes it all seem the more 
dramatic and unreal. The direct victims of the sword probably did 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION I 5 

not exceed eight hundred on the part of the victors, and fifteen hundred 
on that of the vanquished, yet the fruit of victory was a domain as 
wide as an extensive kingdom in the old world. Here again tragedy 
takes on a farcical aspect. 

The Constitution of the Republic of Texas, the throes of whose 
birth I have described, had as a document a singular history which is 
not generally known. About eight years after it was framed I heard 
from Mr. Henry Smith, the ex-Provisional Governor, some casual 
remarks in regard to that instrument. " There is something," said he, 
" about that constitution which I cannot comprehend. I was present 
when it was framed, and watched its formation closely all through, and 
I am certain there were some good things put into it which I cannot 
find there now." Another gentleman, who had been an attendant on 
the Convention, told me at a still later day that had not the break up 
arid flight from Washington occurred so soon, he would have been the 
first incumbent of an office which he named. " But," said I, " there is 
no such office provided for in the Constitution." After a moment's 
reflection he replied : " I do not remember to have seen it in the present 
printed form, but I am confident there' was such a provision in the orig- 
inal." I was puzzled by the remarks of both, and it was not until some 
years later that the mystery was explained to me, as a piece of secret 
history, related by Dr. Miller, a gentleman who was prominent in the 
affairs of Texas both before and after the Revolution. When victory 
enabled the new Government to get into working order, the Constitu- 
tion, that is, the enrolled form of it, which bore the signatures of the 
framers, could not be found, and there was no complete or connected 
copy. There had been a scattering of everything, and it could not then 
be ascertained who had taken charge of the instrument. The time was 
near when it ought to be submitted to the people for acceptance, but 
there was no Constitution to offer them ; yet one must be had ; the 
executive tub would not hold the little authority it had, if the public 
should discover that its bottom had dropped out. To call a new con- 
vention would stave the tub outright, and there was no knowing what 
mischief such a bodv might do, when there was no fear of the sword to 
keep them at their legitimate work. People returning to devasted 
fields, moreover, had more important work in hand than even constitu- 
tion making, as Houston seems to have thought when he announced his 
late victory. His proclamation which gave the news ended with, " Let 
the people plant corn." In this strait of the Government the only 
resource that offered was that adopted by Tom Pipes, a nautical charac- 



1 6 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

ter in one of Smollet's novels. His master had entrusted him with a 
love letter, which the bearer put into his shoe as safer than his pocket, 
and wore it out before suspecting the danger. Being anxious to fulfill 
his duty without confessing his carelessness, he employed a village 
schoolmaster to write another letter in place of that destroyed. One or 
more persons connected with the Convention had preserved rough 
draughts of contitutional sections, the papers by which they had been 
introduced, or from which they had been enrolled. This data was not 
complete, but the President and others remembered the substance of 
other sections which could not be found in writing. One of the best 
lawyers in Texas was employed to put all these written and remem- 
bered fragments together in fitting order and connection. Thus a con- 
stitution was made out, and this substitute was submitted to the people, 
and ratified by a popular vote. Not long after its acceptance the orig- 
inal document, like Hilkiah's book of the law, turned up. Here was a 
new dilemma. A tub with two bottoms might be as embarrassing as one 
with none ; and lest the question should be raised which was the true con- 
stitution, that made by the Convention, or that ratified by the people, it was 
thought safest to consign the former to oblivion. It was accordingly 
sealed up and laid away among the secret archives of the Government 
of Texas, where it may still remain, if it escaped a burning of records 
which occurred some twenty years ago. The work above referred to 
ought not to be classed among the pious frauds which really devout 
men in early days occasionally committed. The fabricators aimed at 
reproducing the same constitution which had already been made, and 
were more nearly successful than Tom Piper's pedagogue. There was 
no new matter forged, and very little of the old left out. Their pa- 
triotic fabrication must have been carried through with great secrecy ; 
for it was long unknown to those most likely to have discovered it. 
Hard-headed Henry Smith probably went to his grave in California 
without any solving of the mystery he complained of. 

I return to what was the leading object of this article, that of giv- 
ing a sketch of the most prominent of the Mexican citizens who took 
part in the Revolution of Texas. 

Don Jose Antonio Navarro, whose course in the Convention I have 
already briefly mentioned, was born at San Antonio, Texas, in 1796. 
His father, though of Spanish paternitv, was by birth a townsman of the 
great Napoleon, being a native of Ajaccio, in the island of Corsica, 
The grand-father of Jose Antonio Navarro was a Spanish army officer, 
who, after marrying a Corsican lady of Ajaccio, took up his abode 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION ] ly 

there for some years, and then removed with his family to Mexico, and 
established himself at San Antonio. The Corsican element in Navar- 
ro's ancestry has been commemorated by a local name. A county in 
Texas called Navarro has a county seat named Corsicana. 

In 1811, while Navarro's father was living, and the Mexican war of 
Independence was in progress, a small auxiliary force was raised in the 
United States with the view of aiding the insurgents, and planting the 
banner of revolt in Texas, to which the rising had not yet extended. 
The expedition was at first sucessful ; it was joined by a considerable 
nomber of the natives of the province, and the town of La Bahia (now 
called Goliad), and afterward that of San Antonio were taken. After 
some other successes, however, the insurgents were, in 181 2, over- 
powered and totally defeated on the Medina, by a strong body of 
Royalist troops under General Arredondo. The larger portion of the 
troops and most of the subordinate officers of this force were native 
Mexicans ; and among others of this class was a sprightly, knavish 
young cadet, about sixteen years of age, who was attached to the staff 
of the Spanish General. He had just made his first essay in arms, in a 
province where, twenty-four years later, he was very near making his 
last. The name of that cadet was Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana. He 
became a guest of the Navarro family, when the victors, after the battle 
of the Medina, occupied San Antonio. Young Navarro, the subject of 
this sketch, was then absent from his home ; and though they did not 
become personally acquainted, the guest came to know the other lad 
by character. The latter, being the pride of the family, was often 
mentioned as a youth of promising talents ; and some of his letters and 
essays were shown to the General and his officers. It is probable that 
the cadet at this time formed an opinion of Navarro's abilities, which 
was of no advantage to him at a later period. Another thing occurred 
which had the same effect. The cadet was detected in a fraudulent act, 
which would have disgraced him had he suffered the justice which it was 
so often his luck to escape. Though the matter was hushed up, it was 
known to the Navarro family ; and Santa Ana, in his days of power, had 
no kind feeling for those who knew of that early stain. 

Jose Antonio Navarro was educated for an advocate, and though he 
never went into regular practice, was well read in the system of Civil 
Law which govern in Spain and Spanish countries. He was for some 
years a Commissioner for the granting of donation land titles to the 
settlers of DeWitt's colony on the Guadaloupe ; and it was, I think, while 
holding that office that he met with an accident which made him a 



1 8 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

permanent cripple. He had the usual passion of Mexicans for skill 
in horsemanship, and in throwing the lasso; and while engaged one day 
in those exercises, his horse fell on him, and crushed his leg in such a 
way as left him with a stiff knee for the rest of his life. He served one or 
more sessions in the Legislature of Coahuila and Texas, and on the 2d of 
March, 1835, was elected to the Congress of Mexico ; but ow- ing to the rev- 
olutionary movements which followed he declined to take his seat, and on 
the same day of the following year he signed the declaration of inde- 
pendence of Texas. So soon as the Government of the new Republic 
went into operation he was elected to the Senate, and continued a 
member of that body as long as it existed, except during the interval 
Avhen he was a prisoner in Mexico. 

The Mexican citizens of Texas who were loyal to the Republic often 
had their loyalty severely tried by the illiberal suspicions and rough 
bearing of the lower order of the Anglo-American element ; and it was 
this, more than any normal tendency to disaffection, which drove 
Seguin from the f^ag under which he had fought so gallantly. In no peo- 
ple are race antipathies liable to be more bigoted and mean than in those 
of Anglo-Saxon blood ; and of the under st';t:- of that breed the low 
American is perhaps the worst sample. The Navarro family suffered a 
terrible blow from the hand of such a specimen. In revolutionary times 
families are liable to be divided, and brothers sometimes take opposite 
sides. Don Angel Navarro, a younger brother of Jose Antonio, 
adhered to the cause of Mexico, and was mustered into her service 
under a commission he held as a Captain of the Mexican Militia. But 
the brothers did not allow political difference to extinguish fraternal 
affection. Don Angel return to, or remained in Texas after the Mexican 
army retreated, and reported himself to General Albert Sidney Johnston, 
then in command ; the same who, twenty-six 3'ears later, fell at Shiloh. 
Don Angel frankly owned that he was unable to take sides with Texas, and 
that he had served Mexico, and tendered to the General the surrender of 
his sword, willing, if i-equired, to remain as a prisoner, or to go to the inte- 
rior of Mexico ; but requesting that, if not incompatible with the General's 
sense of duty, he might be permitted to remain, on the footing of an 
alien, and under parole, at San Antonio, where his relations lived. This 
soldierl)^ candor could not fail to tell with such a man as Johnston, and 
he granted the request. Some month after this, and while the younger 
Navarro was domiciliated at San Antonio w'ith his brothers, there came 
to that place a young American, named Tinsley — a Captain in the service 
of Texas. He may have been attached to a local garrison, but of that I 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION I9 

am not certain ; but he was of that peculiar type of ruffianism which is 
bred only by " the greatest nation on God's earth." As pretentious and 
swaggering- as no one but a coward ought to be, yet without a white 
feather in his gaudy plumage ; perfectly fearless, yet capable of the 
most cowardly acts, such as stabbing in the back a man whom he would 
not have shrunk from fronting openly. The peculiar position in which 
young Navarro stood towards Texas, could not fail to draw to him the 
attention of this bravo, who announced a determination to seek and find a 
feud with the Mexican. The latter, who did not wish to compromise his 
kindred, was guarded, but courteously unflinching in his deportment, 
and for a while, avoided the collision which the other sought. At 
length Tinsley took occasion to post up a pasquinade on the corner of 
the Navarro residence, with an announcement that he would chastise 
any one who should dare to take it down. It reflected, in scurrilous 
terms, on a person in whom young Navarro was supposed to feel an 
interest, and was, no doubt, put up as a decoy to a quarrel, and in the 
expectation that he would remove it. The first person of the family 
who saw the paper was the elder Navarro, then acting as a justice oi 
the peace. He immediately removed it. The corner room of the 
dwelling, which had been fitted for a store, and was now used as an 
office by the Navarros, was soon after entered by Tinsley, who found 
no one there at the moment but the man he sought. The few words 
which passed between them — the last words of both — were heard, and a 
glimpse of the last struggle was caught, through the open door, by 
persons outside. "Did you take down that paper?" imperiously 
demanded Tinsley. " No," replied Don Angel, " it was taken down by 
my brother, the Justice of the Peace, in his official capacity." " I believe 
you took it down yourself, or had it done," said Tinsley, " and I will 
chastise you, as I promised." At this Navarro grasped his opponent 
and demanded: " Do you threaten me with the cowhide?" While he 
was i-epeating the question, Tinsley drew a pistol and shot Navarro 
through the chest. But the latter retained sufficient vitality to keep his 
hold till he drew a knife and buried the blade into the assassin's breast. 
His grasp then relaxed, and Tinsley staggered out of the door, and to the 
other side of a narrow street. There he sank upon a seat by the side of a 
shop door, and in another moment, fell dead to the pavement. Navarro's 
two brothers rushed to the office the moment they heard the pistol. 
The dying man was still on his feet, with his back against the counter. 
They spoke to him ; his eye seemed to recognize them, but he could no 
longer speak. They laid him gently down ; but by the time they had 
put him into a recumbent posture, life was gone. 



20 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

As soon as the news of the tragedy spread, Navarro's friends and 
relations seized their arms and rushed to the spot where it had occurred, 
for they knew not what outrages might follow this opening scene. 
There were in the place a number of Americans of Tinsley's type, 
though none perhaps who equalled him in its distinctive traits. They 
also came rushing in arms to the spot, and each group was followed by 
others, Mexicans and Americans, till the two half hostile elments of the 
population confronted each other. Had only one of the antagonists 
fallen, there would have been an attempt to avenge him, which would 
have brought on a frightful collision, bloody enough to leave the town 
half desolate ; but when the fierce factions saw that the representatives 
of both lay dead within a few yards of each other, their excitement was 
chilled, and the more peaceful of both races found no difficulty in 
inducing them to disperse. The elder Navarro afterwards observed, 
that since one of the two combatants had to fall, it was a mercy of Provi- 
dence that both died in the first encounter ; for a survivor could not 
long have outlived what would have followed such a beginning, and 
the result would have been many deaths instead of two. The Navarros 
received the deep sympathy of the whole Anglo-American population 
of Texas, or at least of all whose sympathy was worth accepting, and 
they had enough discernment to know that a calamity, resulting indi- 
rectly from the contest in which they had taken sides, had no identity 
with the aims and principles of the cause of Texas. 

In 1841, during the administration of President Lamar, an ill- 
devised and unfortunate expedition against New Mexico was under- 
taken by the Government of Texas. A part of that province, lying east 
of the Rio Grande, was within the bounds claimed by Texas, but never 
yet held, and it was thought that as the claim of the Republic to the 
Rio Grande boundary could only be established by possession, an effort 
ought to be made to hold the country up to that line, at least on the 
upper portion of the river, where no dense population stood in the way 
of occupancy. The objection to the plan was that New Mexico, though 
nearer to the centre of Texas than to the centre of Mexico, was phys- 
ically more severed from the former country than from the latter. 
Hence it was more within the reach of Mexico than of Texas, and could 
be defended by the stronger power with less effort that it cost the 
weaker to assail it. The expedition was commanded by General Hugh 
McLeod, and was accompanied by two civil commissioners, entrusted 
with all the organizing powers which the President had authority to 
depute. Don Jose Antonio Navarro and Colonel Wm. G. Cooke were 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 21 

appointed to that commission. The former accepted the appointment 
with misgiving, and only at the earnest soHcitation of the President, 
who, as the expedition was destined to a province having a Mexican 
population, deemed it essential that the commission should have the aid 
of a Mexican citizen of Texas, who was a man of talent and character, 
as well as of Spanish legal education. Navarro was the only one who 
could be found completely filling those requisites, and he finally accepted 
the mission. He felt that in case of success he might prove a useful 
protector to a Mexican population brought suddenly under the military 
control of another race. 

The expedition, which marched by a route little known, and beset 
with unappreciated difficulties, had to fight with famine and toils and 
accidents of the way before it saw an)^ other enemy than the Comanches ; 
and it finally entered New Mexico, so destitute and exhausted, that the 
only thing it could do to save life, was to surrender to a superior 
Mexican force. 

The prisoners were soon put on a march from Santa Fe to the city 
of Mexico. Their terms of capitulation entitled them to be treated as 
prisoners of war; a march of that immense length, much of it 
through a region almost of deserts, would necessarily involve no little 
hardship even under a merciful escort ; but the treatment of the pris- 
oners depended mainly on the character of the officer who, for the time 
being, had charge of them ; and they were at times subjected to great 
brutality. One well-remembered case of this kind was that of a man 
named McAllister, a cripple, who was cut down by the officer of the 
guard because he lagged behind the march. Navarro, who was as much 
a cripple, at times had to travel on foot, but was generally allowed 
means of transportation. 

During the early part of the march, and I think before it had got out 
of the bounds of New Mexico, an incident occurred, for which 
Navarro was then unjustly censured by his companions. The prisoners, 
or a portion of them, formed a conspiracy to rise on the guard and 
liberate themselves. They could perhaps have overcome the escort 
after some loss of life, as the Mier prisoners did two years later, but the 
result would have been the same, or worse. The Mier prisoners, after 
great sufferings, in seeking to make their way through a mountainous 
desert, were recaptured, and decimated by way of punishment. The 
Santa Fe prisoners, when the attempt was contemplated, were much 
farther from the frontier of Texas, and in a country more difficult to 
traverse. After a portion had perished, the rest would have been 



22 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

recaptured, and probably have suffered a worse fate than decimation. 
Had the rising been effected, I doubt if any of them would ever again 
have seen Texas. As it was, most of them, after all their sufferings, 
came back. When the plot was nearly ripe, one of the conspirators 
made it known to Navarro, through his driver, for he was at the time 
riding in a buggy drawn by two donkeys. He saw at a glance that it was 
probable death to them and certain death to him. Should the rising suc- 
ceed, the flight, owing to his condition, would have to leave him behind to 
take the brunt of resentment for their escape, and for the blood they would 
shed in effecting it ; and if he were not knocked in the head during the 
melee, he would be sure to take that stroke of retaliation afterwards. He 
at once gave such intimation to the officer of the guard as led to an in- 
crease of vigilance, and the attempt at rising was prevented. About five 
years later I heard this affair related by one of the conspirators, an Ti-ish- 
man, then a steamboat hand on Galveston Bay. He spoke with much bit- 
terness of Navarro's " blowing of the plot," as he called it, but it took 
but few words to convince him that the mformer had saved all their 
lives; and he finally admitted that, "after all, the old man acted right." 
The Santa Fe prisoners at length reached the city of Mexico, where 
Navarro was confined for same months, and then transferred to the 
Castle of San Juan de Ulloa, at Vera Cruz. Santa Ana, after repeated 
ups and downs, was again President of Mexico. He had never given 
up the hope of recovering Texas, though not anxious to enter it 
himself, and he now, for the first time, held in his power one of 
the signers of the Texan declaration of Independence, and the 
most odious then living, for he was the only survivor of the 
few who were Mexicans by birth, tongue and race. A few years 
before, this would have soon led to an execution for treason, and it was 
currently rumored in Mexico that Navarro would ere long suffer the 
death penalt}'' ; but Santa Ana probably did not feel free to proceed in 
the same summary way as in the beginning. The independence of Texas 
had been acknowledged by one or more of the leading foreign govern- 
ments, and it was not advisable to shock the civilized world again with 
atrocities like those of 1836. Santa Ana, moreover, had come round, 
somewhat, to John Wilkes' opinion, that a man may be put to a better 
use than hanging ; and if Navai-ro could not be made useful, his punish- 
ment, by endless imprisonment, would be more gratifying to the 
punisher than would his release by execution. After it was thought 
that Navarro's fortitude had been sufificientl}' wrought on b}' rigorous 
confinement, and hints of a postponed trial for treason, it was intimated 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 23 

to him that not only full pardon and liberty, but also rich reward were 
within his reach, if he would consent to earn them. He could have the 
rank of Brigadier-General in the Mexican army, or if he preferred civil life, 
the position of Collector of Customs at Vera Cruz, one of the most lucrative 
offices under that Government. All he had to do to secure this boon 
was to renounce his citizenship of Texas, recant the act he committed in 
signing the declaration of Independence, consent to enter the Mexican 
service, and do what he could to bring back Texas to her former 
allegiance. Santa Ana, who could not have well comprehended the 
nature of social and political elements in Texas, probably supposed that 
there, as in Mexico, each leading man could carry with him the votes 
and following of a considerable district, and that the chief who could 
secure the suport of those magnates could control the country. Having 
been from boyhood impressed with a belief of Navarro's superior talent, 
and knowing the estimation in which he was held by the Mexican popu- 
lation of Texas, he no doubt greatly over-estimated the political influence 
which his captive could exert. Against the above offer stood, at best, 
the apparent alternative of imprisonment for life, two thousand miles 
away from family and friends. That offer, moreover, was an appeal to 
the sympathy of race against principle, made to one who had suffered 
by the struggle of principle against the collision of race. But Navarro 
knew where the highest duty was enthroned. Bonds and death were 
better than dishonor, and the offer was spurned. 

The weary months lagged on, and one 3^ear after another of impris- 
onment was completed. The Santa Fe prisoners, all save Navarro, 
were at length released as an act of grace. The same favor was then 
extended to those captured in 1842, during WoU's raid on San Antonio, 
and then to those of the Mier expedition, after they had suffered decima- 
tion. Each of those bodies of prisoners, as well as I can recollect, 
endured a year more or less of captivity and were then dismissed, with 
a kind of contemptuous clemency, as insignificant ; and Navarro was 
the only Texan prisoner that remained. Liberty could any day have 
been bought, but the price was not forthcoming. 

At length he was informed that liberty would be granted without any 
other pledge than that of remaining in Mexico, if he would but send for 
his family ; and that he should be liberated on those terms immediately 
on their arrival. He saw at once in this an insidious proposal, made 
with a view of gaining a new grasp for controlling him. He had met 
previous advances calmly but sternly ; but this awakened a fierce 
outburst of passion. He denounced Santa Ana as the meanest of 



24 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

oppressors, and said to the messenger that he would sooner rot in 
chains than listen to any offer the tyrant was capable of making. ** He 
may destroy me," said Navarro, " but he cannot deprive me of the 
* respect of the brave and constant people with whom my lot is cast, and 
who will appreciate my loyalty and honor my memory." 

These attempts to tamper with the loyalty of the captive were, I 
think, all made after he was transferred to Vera Cruz. The last one cer- 
tainly was. Within the castle of San Juan de Ulloa, along the foot of the 
eastern rampart, is a circuit of cells for prisoners, which open upon a 
paved walk. In one of those, which, as well as I recollect, was num- 
bered 51, Navarro was confined. Some time after what has just been 
related, how long I do not remember, an officer of the garrison called 
on the prisoner and told him that President Santa Ana had arrived at 
Vera Cruz, and would visit the Castle in the afternoon. " He will," 
said the officer, " make an inspection of the works, and in the cool of 
evening will pass along with his staff in front of these cells. The door 
of yours will be left open. You will hear when he passes, and will have 
an opportunity to go forth and make a personal appeal to him." He 
spoke in the manner of one delivering a set form of words, and made no 
suggestions. The evening came, and the door was left unlocked. 
Among other changes which had come to Santa Ana since he was 
released from Texas, was the loss of a leg, and the use of a wooden sub- 
stitute. Navarro sat alone in his cell listening for the approach of the 
military group, but with no thought of availing himself of the opportu- 
nity. At length the measured step of a number of men was heard, 
and among them, as Navarro expressed it, the stumping of that wooden 
foot accursed. (Maldita pata de palo.) In front of his cell they paused. 
He then heard Santa Ana say : " This is cell No. 51." He was replied 
to in the affirmative. He still paused, as if to make some indifferent 
inquiries about the works. The pause was evidently intentional ; but 
finding that nothing came of it he stumped onward. Though Navarro 
had harbored no intent to humble himself before the tyrant, that pause 
of his great enemy before the cell door brought to him, as he said, an 
indescribable rush of mcmor}^ and feeling, such as is said to come to a 
drowning man. 

" Though in existence almost nought, 
It was eternity to thought." 

He thought of his family, the friends of his youth, and the scenes in 
which nearly his whole life had been passed. Santa Ana was human, 
and had at times been generous. He had liberated others. Would 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 25 

anything be lost by a personal appeal? Might not liberty be recovered 
without loss of honor? But Spanish pride rose up against the tempter. 
Navarro stirred not a muscle, but sat listening to the beating of his own 
heart, till the less audible footsteps died away in the distance. 

The next day the officer who had given Navarro the information just 
related called on him again. " You did not avail yourself of the oppor- 
tunity," he observed. " No," said Navarro. " Nothing was to be gained 
of that man by humiliation ; and even if there had been, it was a price I 
was unwilling to pay." " You have done right," said the officer, " and I 
respect you for it more than I can express." 

Santa Ana, I have no doubt, had devised the opportunity, and 
caused it to be announced, as an occasion for humbling and spurning a 
man who was in his power, and who had exasperated him by the indig- 
nant manner in which he had repulsed his last advances ; for Navarro's 
words on that occasion had probably been reported to the President. 
Such was the belief of Navarro ; and the officer just mentioned, whose 
name I regret that I do not remember, seems to have been of the same 
opinion. 

Navarro's confinement, which had been rigorous, in the city of 
Mexico, and for some time after his removal to San Juan de UUoa, was, 
in consequence of his failing health, somewhat relaxed during the later 
portion of his imprisonment in the castle, when he was allowed, during 
the day, the freedom of the ramparts. He probably then received from 
subordinates more indulgence than their superior would have sanctioned. 
Yet this partial freedom brought with its relief many gloomy reflections. 
The view of the busy mart intensified his desire for larger liberty ; and 
the sight of vessels sailing out of the port and disappearing in the hori- 
zon reminded him too mournfully of that distant home which he hardly 
hoped ever again to reach. Casual remarks often made it evident that 
he was looked upon by those around him as one doomed to wear out 
his last years within prison walls. An old employee of the post, who 
had passed many years at the castle, was one day speaking of the cycli- 
cal recurrence of sickly seasons, and said to Navarro ; " You will see that 
once in every seven years the vomito will prevail at tJiis place with unusual 
violence." The evidently unintentional character of what was implied 
made it more pointed, and carried a pang to the heart of the listener. 
He said that while wrapped in dreamy musings of this kind, the sight of 
a Texas newspaper which reached him brought a consolation which was 
indescribably sweet in its sadness. It contained a resolution of the 
Congress of Texas, or of some representative assemblage, expressing 



26 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 

deep sympathy with his sufferings, and a full appreciation of his heroic 
patriotism. He had often given way to a somewhat morbid apprehen- 
sion that no merit of his could overcome prejudice of race; and this 
manifestation of public sentiment, which relieved him from that dread, 
brought tears to his eyes, and made him feel that he could endure, for a 
people who could do him justice, the worst that fate still had in store 
for him. 

But all things have an end, and the time at length came when the 
trials of the patriot were to terminate. In the spring of 1845, Santa 
Ana was overtaken by one of those oft repeated falls from which he had 
as often risen. He was deposed by a revolution headed by Paredes, and 
had to fly the country. The otificer in command at Vera Cruz, who 
took sides with the revolutionists, had compassion on Navarro, and to 
avoid the delay and uncertainty which might attend the procurement of 
a formal liberation, connived at his escape and concealment on board of 
a British steamer about leaving the port. That vessel left the fugitive 
at Hav^ana, whence he proceeded to Galveston b}' way of New Orleans. 
His arrival spread joy through Texas ; and he was everywhere received 
with the demonstrations of gratitude and admiration which his patriot- 
ism so well merited. His captivity had lasted from about the close of 
i84i,to the spring of 1845. He arrived in Texas when annexation to the 
United States was pending, and in the summer of 1845 took his seat in 
the Convention which framed the constitution of the State of Texas, 
preparatory to its reception into the Union. He was that year elected 
to the State Senate, and served in it two or three terms, when he 
declined a reelection, and retired from public life. When the secession 
of the State occurred, he had for several years ceased to take any part 
in political affairs. He died, I think, in 1871 or 1872. 

I have named four Mexicans of Texas who figured in her declaration 
of Independence and what led to it. Two of them, Zavala and Ruiz, I 
never saw. Padilla I knew slightly, but with Navarro I was intimate, 
having acted as his interpreter during the first session of the State Sen- 
ate. He was a man of clear and analytical mind, with the kind of 
capacitv, and the depth of it that would have fitted him for the highest 
positions; executive, legislative or judicial. In Texas he represented an 
unenlightened fraction of the population, to whom the new element was 
alien, and the tongue of the former only was his. This kept him down 
from the prominence which would have claimed him, had the country 
been peopled equally by the two races; for he had the capacity, not 
only to represent one. but to unite the two. He was the most eloquent 



THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 2/ 

Spanish orator whom I have heard ; but this gift was mainly thrown 
away upon an assemblage whom he had to address through an inter- 
preter. Had early education made the English language as available to 
him as his sonorous native tongue, he would not only have been a star 
in the Congress of Texas, but have passed from it to that of the United 
States. Indeed, during the first year or two after annexation, he 
was frequently spoken of as a fitting candidate, notwithstanding the 
disadvantage that clogged him. His life and character exhibit one of 
those obscure cases of heroic worth for which early oblivion yawns ; 
and glad would I be to know that words of mine could rescue, even for 
a little while, from such a fate, the memory of a friend so noble and 
beloved. The dungeon stones of Ulloa, trod first by Zavala and then 
by this Bonnivard of Texas, ought to be as sacred to the eye of Patriot- 
ism as those of Chillon, 

"For thej^ appeal from Tyranny to God." 

R. M. POTTER 



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